Course Design: Accessibility of Course Design (ECP 1.13-1.16)
Make sure anyone can access anything in your course
1.13 The design and delivery of content supports inclusive pedagogy by integrating alternative options (e.g., transcripts), enabling assistive processes (e.g., voice recognition), and inviting choice to support and engage students with diverse learning needs and preferences
5 points (Compulsory)
While it might sound like this standard will mean you are creating a lot of resources, that isn’t really the case. Essentially this standard comes down to making sure each aspect of your course is built in a way that allows for it to either be read out loud for those who cannot read the text or includes text for those who are not able to hear it. The good news is there are tools that make this a simple process.
All students benefit from alternative resources as it allows for greater choice related to how they use materials, such as students listening to content while driving or using captions in environments where they cannot have sound playing.
Steps to take
Ensure all videos in your course either have closed captions (strongly preferred) or transcripts.
YouTube offers an option to download transcripts, so you don’t need to write these yourself if you already have correct captions.
Use standard document types and utilize their built in accessibility checkers and accessibility best practices before you add these files to your course. When possible, use Word files rather than PDFs because they allow student choice in relation to font size, type, and color.
Generally your learning management system will limit what you can do within it in a way that makes your content more accessible. Those guard rails feel constricting, but they actually help you meet standards like this one.
Use a web content accessibility checker for websites, which may include digital textbook content (despite what a publisher may tell you, textbooks are not always accessible!).
1.14 Course files (e.g., documents, PDFs, presentations) use built-in accessibility formatting options to support assistive technologies (e.g., screen readers, screen magnification)
5 points (Compulsory)
This sounds more intimidating than it actually is and there are a lot of tools to help you. Most commonly used software, such as Microsoft Office, or Adobe Acrobat, have accessibility checkers to help you with this process.
If you have scanned PDFs of articles or books, these will not be accessible and will have to be replaced or recreated.
Steps to take
Create documents that follow formatting best practices (headings, styles, bullets, spacing, etc.).
Make sure any files, such as Word, PowerPoint, or PDF, are fully accessible. You should use accessibility checkers within the software as you create or modify files. You will want to know accessibility best practices because while these accessibility checkers are an excellent resource, they are not always accurate.
Check any materials created by a third party. Even if they claim to be accessible, you should check them yourself.
1.15 Course materials support multiple modalities for learner engagement (e.g., visual (seeing), auditory (hearing), kinesthetic (moving), and tactile (touching))
3 Points
Generally, if you have done the work for standard 1.5 to infuse your course with multimedia, you are well on your way to meeting this standard. You don’t need to try to incorporate all of these preferences into each learning objective. It wouldn’t be feasible, but the goal is to provide as much learner choice as you can.
Note: While it has similar wording, this standard is not about “learning styles,” which is a controversial and complex educational learning theory.
Steps to take
Ensure your course uses a variety of different media, including videos and images.
When possible, provide multiple types of assessments (this ties together with standard 3.6), which will allow you to better serve learner preference).
As appropriate to your topic and objectives, consider ways you can prompt students to physically engage through kinesthetic and/or tactile activities.
1.16 Design factors such as color, text size manipulations, audio and video controls, and alt text use consistent and standard formatting to reflect universal accessibility considerations
2 points
As long as you have done the work to ensure accessibility of your course files (standard 1.14) this comes down to the content within your learning management system, such as module overviews, explanations of files, etc.
Essentially, you want to ensure your content can be read by a screen reader and has proper contrast and text size. The audio/video control part of this standard will be automatically met if you use file types acceptable to your learning management system and/or embed video and audio from common hosting sites.
Steps to take
Maintain good contrast of text by using a dark color on a light background (or the reverse, though most learning management systems will default to a light background).
Ensure your text is in at least 11 point font.
Don’t use underlining except for with hyperlinks.
Make sure all videos are properly captioned (accurate, spelled correctly, properly time synched), even if you weren’t the one who made the video.
Provide accurate transcripts for audio files.
Ensure all image files in your course and within your course files are either properly captioned in a way that fully explains the image. If it is only decorative, it can be marked as such, but don’t mark it as decorative just to improve an accessibility checker score.
These are simple steps, but do not encompass all the design factors. Web accessibility checkers—and any that may be part of your learning management system—are important tools to help meet this standard.
Click here to continue on to Interaction and Collaboration: Communication Strategies (ECP 2.1-2.3).